Angelfall by Susan Ee

Title: Angelfall

Author: Susan Ee

Quick Synopsis: (taken from the back of the book)
It's been six weeks since angels of the apocalypse descended to demolish the modern world. Street gangs rule the day while fear and superstition rule the night. When warrior angels fly away with a helpless little girl, her seventeen-year-old sister Penryn will do anything to get her back.

Anything, including making a deal with an enemy angel.

Raffe is a warrior who lies broken and wingless on the street. After eons of fighting his own battles, he finds himself being rescued from a desperate situation by a half-starved teenage girl.

Traveling through a dark and twisted Northern California, they have only each other to rely on for survival. Together, they journey toward the angels' stronghold in San Francisco where she'll risk everything to rescue her sister and he'll put himself at the mercy of his greatest enemies for the chance to be made whole again.

General Thoughts: This has to be one of the best books I've read in a while. It was absolutely amazing. Penryn is a fascinating character, one of the better female characters that I've come across, and her relationship with Raffe is believable, and totally not your average YA paranormal relationship. Honestly, I was getting tired of the whole "I-love-you-but-I-can't-love-you-because-I'll-hurt-you-but-I'm-going-to-love-you-anyway" deal. It's nice to have something different for a change. The focus of the book was totally what the back of the book makes you think it is: Penryn needs to rescue her sister from the clutches of the angels.

My Favourite Part: The ending. Totally not being sarcastic here. The ending was absolutely beautiful. Also, Ee's prose really brings across Penryn's voice (the book being told in the 1st person), and you can't help but get emotionally involved. Towards the end, when the moment of truth arrives, there were so many emotions rolling around in my stomach that I almost had to stop reading, just to take a breather and settle my nerves. (Except I didn't, because it was so good I had to keep going.)

My Least Favourite Part: Penryn and Raffe's names. Don't get me wrong, Penryn is a lovely name, but I just don't think it suited her, and it was used so infrequently that I didn't have a chance to get used to it. Raffe's name itself is fine, it's how the author has us pronounce it that's a little iffy with me. Apparently, the "e" is a long "e", so that his name is pronounced "RA-fee." I just kept thinking it was "RA-fey", probably because...I have no idea, really. I just think that "RA-fey" sounds better than "RA-fee." Works better in my head, or something like that. I'm really very weird.

But that being said, these were minor things, and the fact that I can't come up with anything else to say here should tell you how much I LOVE this book. I can't wait to get my hands on the next one.

Scale of 1 to 10: 9.5